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Comment by ken | Hacker News Reader

The first comment there:

> now everybody needs to use a mix of iMessage, WhatsApp, and Slack

It's funny whenever I see someone list the chat systems that "everybody needs to use" because they're always different.

The top chat systems that I need to use to communicate with my friends/colleagues are Messenger, Hangouts, and Threema. I haven't used Slack in years, since I left tech. I've never seen anyone use WhatsApp in real life, or heard anyone ask that I install it. I occasionally use the Messages app but usually just for SMS.

There's probably 10 or 12 different incompatible chat systems in common use today, and which 3-4 you use on a daily basis depends on your geography and culture and industry. And that's kind of awful.

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It depends on country. In Czech Republic, what's popular is Messenger. In western Europe, WhatsApp is quite popular. In eastern Europe, people like Viber (and some people Telegram).

I am living in SEAsia now, and here it also depends on country. In some countries, WhatsApp rules; but in others, Line (weird Japanese thing) is popular. In Vietnam, where I am now, Zalo is popular; it's basically Whatsapp-but-Vietnamese; people like it, because it has Vietnamese stickers.

Of course China has its own ecosystem.

One of the features that determine how a chat program is popular are stupid stuff like localized stickers, or how well is the whole UX localized to the given language. (And how much is the program blocked in the given country.)

Actually LINE is Korean, owned by Naver. Big in Thailand and some other Asian countries.

The Asian chat apps are Wechat (owned by Tencent), Alichat (owned by Alibaba) and LINE (owned by Naver via a Japanese sub).

They are all competing now to capture the market share, We/Ali are competing hard in China and for many Chinese users, Wechat is the internet. It has embedded apps and a payment network. Alibaba are coming from behind.

WePay/AliPay/LINE Pay are their correlating payment networks.

Whatsapp is not big at all in Asia, it also doesn't have the various support things that people want, like a) stickers and sticker markets (big money on sticker sales), b) "cute" characters and associated toys/cards/etc, c) a payment system that lets kids easily buy virtual stuff like stickers and then extends to support retail/transit etc. That "stupid stuff" is actually worth a fortune.

Disclosure: Working with LINE on transit related applications.

Sorry for that. I thought LINE is Japanese, because it's popular there. I haven't been in Korea.

I have seen WhatsApp popular in... hm, I think it was Thailand? I am not sure now.

...no it was India.

WhatsApp is a non-US thing. In Europe, it has de facto replaced SMS

Only in parts of Europe. In some cliques.

In Italy, Spain is used by just about everyone, not "some cliques", and the statment that has "replaced SMS" is a fair assessment.

Can't say about other countries.

My objection was to the generalization of Europe as a whole.

The Netherlands too. It has a near monopoly on IM here.

Ditto in Asia. In Singapore, no one texts and hardly use fb messenger but whatsapp use is prevalent.

Same thing in neighbouring Malaysia. Everyone operates under the assumption that you are contactable via WhatsApp. Recently I even had doctor and car service appointments booked through WhatsApp.

Based on some quick searches & napkin math, WhatsApp appears to be currently in use by a little over 5% of the U.S. population.

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